Saturday, June 28, 2014

on sanity and otherwise

I currently
work at an agency that serves people with pretty serious mental
health and addiction concerns. In addition to seeing clients
individually, I facilitate a group that is a free form discussion
about spirituality. During both the one-on-one sessions and the
group interactions I am continually struck by the deep sense of
spirituality in the clients and in the sanity that resides
within people who are almost always and all too easily seen and labeled strictly within
the limiting and limited context of their mental health or addiction issues. I have also struck by how they can compartmentalize their inner worlds, one
minute with deep sincerity and conviction speaking from an authentic
spiritual place and not an hour later acting in ways that might be
easily seen as totally unspiritual and that they later regret.

Since
working with this population, I have become increasingly aware of the
“insanity” that resides within my own quite strongly held onto but errant self-perception of “sanity.” (The Buddha repeatedly said that we are all delusional and perhaps the biggest delusion of all is that we think we are not delusional.) I've become
increasingly aware of the tricks my mind plays on me in terms of the
thoughts that become so compelling but are completely fictitious,
habitual, reactive (as opposed to responsive) - only barely and
occasionally lifting their presence above the sea level of awareness.
I am beginning to see how my spirituality, which I like to believe is sincere,
having conviction, and authentic, can be tossed out the door with the
snap of a finger when I am triggered by some event or interaction. I am beginning to comprehend how this triggering can easily prompt me to pursue my own addictive behaviours, whether they are addictions to food, the internet, shutting down into a nap, watching T.V. etc. And I'm starting to understand how I very easily can point to the clients as “them”
and to myself as “us,” safely and self assuringly convincing
myself that I am somehow better than and removed from “them” when in fact we are
all in this together, struggling with histories and biologies and
assumptions and expectations and disappointments and at times utterly
overwhelming events or personal inclinations to act against our own true and lasting
best interest and that of others.

So, to
return again and again to awareness, just like in the instruction of
mindfulness meditation, and to bring with that return a pervasive
sense of self acceptance that is an integrated expression of
loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity toward
the events both out there in the world and arising within my own mind. There is a
saying that I have one of my spiritual mentors, Dr. Rina Sircar, say numerous times during meditation retreats as part of the
loving-kindness meditation, “Taking care of ourselves, we take care
of others. Taking care of others we take care of ourselves.” In
my experience of spiritual care and with all of my known and unknown
imperfections, this 'taking care' is founded upon these sublime abodes: loving-kindness,
compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.